Chapter 16
‘Can everyone please stop shouting?’ I tried to gain a measure of control.
We were all back at the gatehouse now, Lachlan had reclaimed his niche, like an animated statue, and Mal, David and Kaylinn were all yelling above each other in a lasagne of sound that prevented any actual words from being audible.
‘The earl’s mind is made up and he’ll fight even if it does mean losing everything.
He’s got an ideology and he really doesn’t seem to care about himself at all.
Or his men. They have to fight for their beliefs. ’
David took a deep breath. ‘Doesn’t he care about the future?’
‘I don’t think so. No.’ I stared out at the sea to avoid having to look at the terrified faces in front of me. ‘Because – and I can’t stress this enough – he’s never been there. This is all he knows, this and doing the right thing as he sees it.’
‘Well, we’re buggered, then.’ Mal did not seem interested in the philosophical elements. His fear was audible. Despite his attempt at a comedic tone and a couldn’t-care-less attitude his voice was tight with strain.
‘No, no, we have to think of another approach.’ Lachlan held up a hand. ‘You can talk to him again, Pax. Make him see what he will lose if he supports James. We’ve got the advantage in that we know what that future looks like; the McKells becoming impoverished.’
‘We’re not that impoverished,’ I snapped.
‘Not if you had a pony, no,’ Lachlan agreed. ‘But maybe you can lay it on a bit thick?’
‘I can try.’ I turned away from the sea, which was heaving in an angry way and so wasn’t much of a change from the people in front of me.
‘The Picts were easier.’ David scraped a finger over some of the tumbled stones. ‘They fought everybody. As long as you held on to what was yours, nothing else mattered.’
‘Yes, well, we’ve moved on a bit in the ensuing thousand years,’ Mal snapped.
‘Could we try Kenna?’ Kaylinn asked. ‘She can sense us, and George… the earl does listen to her.’
‘She can’t hear us.’ Mal was obviously still feeling disgruntled. ‘What were you going to suggest, semaphore?’
‘All right.’ Lachlan held up a hand and everyone went quiet. ‘Kaylinn, you can try to communicate with Kenna. You seem to have the best handle on the women here and their routine – you stand the best chance of getting through.’
Kaylinn glowed with pride. Mal and David jiggled on the spot, clearly impatient to be busy.
‘Mal and David, I want you to infiltrate the office up there.’ Lachlan jerked a thumb towards the castle.
‘Read through the papers, listen in to the conversations. Find out what’s actually being planned, because if we have a timeline to work to, we can at least know that they’re not going to ride out one night and leave us standing. All right?’
‘Wouldn’t Pax be better for that?’ David asked.
‘He can see her, stupid.’ Mal nudged him. ‘She can hardly put a lampshade on her head and pretend to be furniture, can she?’
‘Well, no.’ David thought for a moment. ‘What are you two going to do?’ He looked from Lachlan to me and back as though he expected us to say that we were far too busy wining and dining to be bothered with involving ourselves in matters as petty as getting out of here.
Lachlan and I exchanged a look. There was a strain in his face that I was sure was mirrored on mine.
We had to do something. With every word George had said, home had seemed to get a little further away.
‘We are going to refine our approach to the earl so that Pax can keep trying,’ Lachlan said.
‘This is all we’ve got, stopping him going into battle, and we’re not going to throw up our hands at the first setback, are we? ’
‘I know the women sit in the cottage in the evenings when all the men are in the hall and talk,’ Kaylinn said. ‘Maybe I can try getting through to Kenna then? I can tell her what’s going to happen. She might not be able to hear me with her ears but her second sight might pick something up.’
‘Good plan.’ Lachlan sat back.
‘I suppose we could have a flip through the rooms up there,’ Mal said grudgingly. ‘There might be written plans or some kind of timeline that will give us a guide.’
‘Excellent. Take some food before you go.’
‘I could really do with some fruit, maybe a salad,’ Kaylinn said dubiously. ‘The food here is a bit… British.’
‘Just be glad we’re not on porridge morning, noon and night.’ Mal patted her shoulder. ‘You’ll adapt.’
‘I don’t want to adapt!’ she wailed.
‘We all want to go home, Kay,’ Lachlan said gently. ‘And we’re going to do what we can to make that happen, all right?’
‘I guess.’ Then she straightened her shoulders. ‘I can keep going if I think of all this as one huge Ren Faire and cosplay.’
‘You do that.’ Lachlan slid out of his hole in the wall. ‘There’s no blueprint for survival. We’re all doing what we can.’
‘Yeah.’ She sounded a little less wobbly now. ‘Yeah. We’re gonna get home, you know.’ Saying the words seemed to give her strength. ‘And then those professors aren’t gonna know what’s hit them!’
Everyone seemed to have an immense amount of faith in me and my powers of persuasion. I didn’t want to point that out. It seemed unnecessarily cruel. Besides which, everyone knew. I could see it in their eyes. We were being busy, doing stuff, because it stopped us thinking.
Home, whatever that meant to each of us, might be within reach but we could not, dared not, imagine we might get back, because any disappointment might well finish us altogether.
Cellar Dog whined at my feet and looked up at roughly where my face was.
I wondered if he was starting to be able to see me and hoped he couldn’t.
I didn’t need to worry about becoming more real here and all that might imply.
Besides, Cellar Dog was a bit mad already; clearly not one of the pack of hounds that roamed the castle.
Great. Trapped in the past with three archaeologists, a historian whose knowledge of history didn’t cover where we were now and a mad dog. Even Netflix wouldn’t make a series out of that.
‘Come on,’ Lachlan said.
‘Where?’ My musings had reached my voice, which sounded dull and a bit hopeless.
‘Oh, I don’t know. Over here?’ He took my elbow and guided me out of the gatehouse and a few metres down the wide, muddy track that, in our time, had been stepped and paved and signposted, ‘Access: No disabled access available. Please only visit Dunaire Castle if you can climb stairs – views of the castle are available from the fields opposite.’
It was still vertiginous, walkable just, but it was a good job we had the postern track and gate for carts and horses.
Lachlan and I ventured down the track. Two of the soldiers stood halfway down, before the incline meant walking sideways and watching where you put your feet.
They were clearly supposedly on duty but in reality sitting on the rising edge of the path and playing a game involving dice.
We couldn’t reach them. Before we got ten metres away from the gatehouse the air thickened in the same way as it had on the postern path.
Two more steps and it was as immovable as granite, like walking into a wind tunnel with the wind set to ‘maximum speed’, except that it wasn’t moving, just ‘there’.
Lachlan prodded the barrier. ‘Checking. Looks like we’re not meant to leave the castle at all.’
‘So, whatever we have to do, it’s definitely here.’ I knew that I ought to feel encouraged by this, as though we were groping forward inch by inch towards a solution. In fact, I really felt slightly sick. That solution was still absolutely nowhere to be found.
‘What do you think?’ He spun around and looked me in the face.
There were so many things I was thinking right now that I needed him to be more specific. ‘What do I think about what?’
Lachlan inclined his head towards the on-duty soldiers, gaming away. ‘These two.’
‘Well, they’re on guard, aren’t they?’ I watched a double six come up and one soldier clap the other on the back and hand over some coins.
‘Two of them? What are they guarding against, a vicious squirrel uprising?’
‘I don’t know, do I?’ I sounded irritable, even though Lachlan’s tone had been more teasing than accusatory. ‘My knowledge of the running of a castle is limited to some cut-and-stick exercises in primary school and a visit to Harlech on holiday with my mum!’
Lachlan looked out. This entry to the castle came directly from the headland, so the view was farmland rather than the sea.
A stretch of woodland dominated the view, small stunted trees, which were obviously whipped a little too vigorously by salt winds, broken by small patches of cleared land.
‘I think they’re watching for a signal,’ he said.
‘They’re not watching very efficiently, then.
’ I still sounded sullen. ‘Not exactly the prime military force I would expect George to be commanding.’ I tried to imagine being an eighteenth-century soldier stuck in a castle waiting for a signal to ride to battle.
It made me shiver. ‘Maybe they don’t want to see a signal.
Maybe everyone here isn’t quite as keen to fight for James as George is? ’
Lachlan scratched his chin. His stubble was a most definite beard now, pale and bordering on the ginger.
It suited him. With his grey eyes and blond hair, he looked as though he should have had one foot up on a rock and be declaiming something about Scotland the Free.
‘That could be it,’ he said thoughtfully.
‘Why would Time bring us somewhere if change was impossible?’
‘Oh, come on, this whole bloody thing is impossible!’ I sounded more peevish now.
‘I’m still waiting to wake up and find all this has been a dream inspired by a documentary coming through the walls from next door and that I’ve got my head in a tikka masala and only two hours to finish prepping a lesson on the Bessemer process. ’